With lines from “Indigenous
People Report New Suspicions of
River Contamination by Mining
Company in Amazonas” by Isabel
Harari, a Pulitzer Center reporting
project
Once, the Alalaú was a dark mirror,
A long dark braid of water
Where the moon could see its
own face.
Now, the Tiaraju stream is a thick
muddy tongue
Licking the throat of the forest,
Tasting of lead, and the things
men leave behind
To keep our cities a smidge
brighter, than they were before
We tell them it is the rain
The company says, the sky is
simply heavy this year
That the water is within the limits
of the law
But the law does not have to
breathe the air
That burns the back of a throat.
The law does not have to feel the
itch upon the skin,
That leaves ashes which scar
I watch Sanapyty stand by the
bank.
He does not need a chemical
analysis
To know the flavor of a dying
god.
He says, “The Tiaraju is dead”
And I wonder how many times a
river can die
Before we stop calling the funeral “progress.”
The fish are turning pale,
Yellowed like decaying teeth,
Thinner than the shadows of
what they once were.
Akynamy whispers into the heat:
“If the fish disappear, our people
will disappear.”
These words are not a metaphor
It is their reality.
We feed the world its tin and its
tantalum.
We mine the bones of this shared
earth,
So that a car in a city
Three thousand miles away,
Can hum that much cleaner.
We, we, we.
Not them.
There is not a thing clear about
a river,
Stripped of its own clarity
About to become, yet another
river of casualty
that will now forget what it meant
to be clear
Their history is a map,
Being blotted out, as if a bottle of
ink just spilled nearby
First it was the highway
Then it was the dam
Now it is the critical minerals
All creeping, like a fever,
That is never treated
We act like this is all a new discovery
But when the Taboca company
arrived, they were not consulted
The Kinja were only erased
One road, one dam, one muddy
stain at a time.
While we looked away, waiting
for the next shipment of light.
We claim no wrongdoing,
As the river changes, we do not.
The Kinja call it a home
Now, its heart is a drum of silt,
Drumming toward a silence
That we will call a “successful
quarter.”
So, let the water be the witness
Let the odor of the river rise into
the boardrooms,
Filling the lungs of men
Who think safety is measured by
numbers rather than effect
While the people who drink the
river
Are drowning in the silence of it
us
The land is not a fridge.
The river is not a drain.
And a people are not a casualty
to be paid for in metal.
Listen: the Alalaú is trying to tell
that even a paradise can go mute
if we keep asking it to swallow
our shame.